Abstract
Informal housing and urban development are major environmental concerns affecting many world cities in a variety of ways. Informal housing is not limited to developed countries, and may be more threatening in developing countries. Governments around the world have formally recognized universal rights to adequate housing and living planning standards. However, the reality falls short of these standards and access to secure property title, land, community services and adequate affordable housing remains difficult. There is a need to adopt sustainable patterns of housing planning development which are not self-destructive in the long run. Informal housing is unauthorized development that occurred around and within city master plan causing unwanted impacts. Land and natural green area around cities are been chewed up by ‘new’ houses, roads, and commercial buildings. Libyan traditional towns like Tripoli, Ghadames or Hoon were compact and efficient, but over the past 15-20 years, low density spontaneous urban extension can easily be noticed around these and other Libyan cities despite general decline in population growth rate from 4.5 in 1995 to 1.83 in 2006. "Urbanized land" is increased remarkably during the same period. The developed hectare per person has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. The paper aims at discussing the phenomena of informal housing in Libya and its impacts on existing city development plan, its reasons, and its urban and architectural characters. The objective is to gain better understanding and to propose some ideas that help deals with spread of informal housing and create a sustainable urban living environment around Libyan cities. The study will focus on Al-Khaleej region by studying housing and urban expansion around the region major cities like Sirt, Ajdabia and Al-Juf. The study, in its methodology, will depend on previous research to formulate its theoretical framework. It will use results of field studies that were done for preparing regional and urban development to draw its conclusions.